License Cancellation Request Form: Fill & Download for Free

You can now cancel your plates online by visiting the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) website. Once there, click on the “Cancel my plate/registration” link under the Online Service Center tab and follow the prompts.To cancel your plates online, you will need your Massachusetts registration number and email address, as well as one of the following: a Massachusetts license, permit, or ID number; the last four digits of your Social Security number; or the FID number if the vehicle is registered to a company or corporation such as if you are leasing it.Once all of the required information is filled out, remember to print out two copies of the Registration Cancellation Receipt. One copy should be provided to your insurance company and the other copy should go to your city or town Assessor’s Office to see if you qualify for an abatement on your excise tax.The RMV is no longer requiring people to mail or bring in their plates when cancelling a registration. If you still have the physical plates, you are responsible for recycling or destroying them.There are two instances when your car registration cannot be cancelled online: if the vehicle has two owners or if you are cancelling somebody else’s registration. In either of these cases, your cancellation request can be processed at a nearby RMV branch. Be sure to download an Affidavit for Cancellation of Registration form.

For what purpose?Massachusetts has had a license and registration program in place of one kind or another since the 1930’s. A person can not so much as touch a gun in this state unless you have a license or are under the direct supervision of an instructor. (That license also requires that you take an approved safety class)Registration of handguns at first, and then long guns starting in the 1970’s have been maintained by the state. Today, such transfers are all recorded using a computer where the license information of the two parties are entered as well as the information on the firearm.Is that the kind of system you would like?Again I ask, for what purpose?For as long as I can remember, various organizations and individuals have made requests of the State Police, Attorney General’s office, and the records board requesting a list of all cases where the registration and license data was used to assist in solving the crime. To date, the state continues to respond to these requests with “No Records Found”. In other words, nearly a century of license and registration has not resulted in a single case being solved that would not have been without the programs.Massachusetts is a state with about 7 million residents. In recent years, the annual budget to maintain and operate the gun license and registration programs was roughly $6 million. In the 1980’s, bankers boxes of the old blue card registration forms were disposed of when they found rodents nesting in them. Glad to see this vital data was well protected. Even today, the accuracy of the records data is mostly unknown.In the year 2000, a criminal opened fire at the Edgewater Office Park killing 7 people. At the time it was referred to as a Workplace Shooting. Today it would be called a Mass Shooting. After the event, two very interesting pieces of information came to light. One, the criminal had an expired Massachusetts license. The license had been expired about 2 years at the time of the shooting. Two, every gun the criminal used was in the state’s registry as being owned by the criminal.So, not only did the state know that this person had guns, they also knew that he had them illegally because of the expired license. And yet, nothing was done.Why?The answer has to do with the state’s laws and resources. In 1998, the state passed a sweeping bill that changed a lot of the gun laws. One of the things that happened was the expiration dates on many licenses was changed. Oh, there was lots of notice in the newspapers and other media, but after the fact the number of valid licenses was nearly 1 million less than what the state had on record prior to the change in law. It is figured that some of them were dead or moved out of state, but certainly many simply didn’t see or understand the change in the law.Faced with nearly a million people that could be potential felons by having a gun and no license, the state did the only thing it could. NOTHING.You see, the vast majority of people don’t commit crimes. Of the people who take the trouble to get a license, far far fewer commit crimes. It simply isn’t a justified use of tax dollars to track down all the people who statistically don’t commit crimes on what is nothing more than a paper violation. When police departments rarely do more than take a report for many crimes, sending resources out to knock on doors just isn’t in the budget.To this day, I still get calls from people who are cleaning out after a family member has passed and they find a gun. It isn’t quite once a month anymore, but certainly 8–10 times a year. Many of those are referred by my police chief. By law, he could confiscate the gun and arrest the person for having a gun without being licensed. Instead, I get called, I can hold onto the gun(s) while we work to get the new owner properly licensed so that they can then legally keep or sell it.But I digress…..Once again, I ask - For what purpose would this registration be used?If it costs $6 million to manage the guns of a state with 7 million residents and there are 328 million people in the United States, are you ready to devote nearly $300 million every year in an attempt to register the guns of people who statistically don’t commit crimes? Especially when the examples that exist have virtually nothing to show from it.Canada tried this. In the beginning they estimated a $2 million budget. After about 15 years and over $1 billion spent, the accuracy of the registry was estimated at under 50%. The program was ended.And that does not even take into account the fact that any new registration program is illegal.No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners' Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established (18 USC § 926(a)).The reason that certain states still maintain a registry is that they were in place before the federal law was enacted. Why these states (mostly run by Democrats) insist on wasting tax dollars on a program that has not shown any benefit is a worthy question.And now for the final reveal.I give you the 1968 Supreme Court case of Haynes vs. US. In a nutshell, the court declared that requiring a Prohibited Person to register their firearm is a violation of their 5th Amendment right against self incrimination. In other words, by law, criminals are not obligated to register their guns.But seriously, why do you want such a thing?(A commenter in another answer noted that Massachusetts has one of the lowest gun death rates in the country. This is true. However, it would be a false leap to give the reason for that to the gun laws. The unique thing about Massachusetts is that we have a significantly lower rate of the use of firearms in suicide. Since suicide makes up roughly 2/3 of all gun related fatalities, a significant drop in that criteria results in a significant drop in “gun deaths”. However, if you look at the overall violent crime statistics, Massachusetts is one of the most violent states in the northeast with bordering states of Vermont and New Hampshire being much lower and virtually no gun laws. Be very careful of how statistics are presented. People with an agenda often use numbers that seem to support their claims but rarely are the details provided.The fact of the matter is that since the major rework of the laws in 1998, violent crime rates in the state have increased dramatically. The total reasons are complex, but a significant part of this is due to fewer people with the means to defend against violent crimes such as rape, home invasions, and armed robbery.Poor people can not afford $500 safety courses or $100 license fees. Chiefs in urban areas make the process difficult with limited hours, appointments that are canceled last minute, and requiring things not in the law like doctor’s notes, shooting tests, proof of employment, and more. All the more proof that when you license a thing, you control a thing. It is no longer a right, but a privilege.The devil, as always, is in the details.)

Which laws are you talking about? The ones that honest people have to follow that are so convoluted and difficult to understand that a lawyer and police chief wrote a book just to educate police on how to interpret the laws? A book that is an 8.5x11 format, now over 400 pages, and in its 8th edition.Law Enforcement Guide to Firearms Law (Printed Edition) – $51.00Or are you referring to the routine practice of ignoring the laws? The state has had the Bartly-Fox law on the books since 1974. The law is pretty simple. If you are found in possession of a firearm without a Massachusetts issued license for that firearm, you go to jail for 1 year. This is a mandatory sentence. Since the laws was enacted, the number of people convicted under it is under 100. Not because they don’t capture criminals with guns and no license - Heck, we’ve had several cases of such arrests where criminals are facing this charge for the second or more times JUST IN 2018! No, the problem is that to ease the court case load, most of the gun charges are dropped in the plea bargains and the criminals plead guilty of lesser crimes. Don’t take my word for it, just search for posts by #MACourtFails and read the revolving door of ‘justice’ for yourself.Lets not forget that in 1998, the state passed a massive overhaul of the gun laws that was so complex, it took over a month for legal experts to figure out all the ramifications. It also included things like:Guns needed to FAIL safety drop tests before they could be sold in the state. Yes, the wording was such that you had to have unsafe guns to be legal. That one took some time to correct.Vets needed to put their parade guns in a case to carry them on public roads. Also fixed at a later time.Restrictions on licenses could be whatever the chief of police wanted it to say and those restrictions carried the weight of law. Yep, you had unelected officials pretty much writing their own laws with no official guide to what the wording actually means. For example, if your license is restricted to “Target and Hunting”, can you stop at a store on the way home from the range for a gallon of milk? Is it even legal to bring your deer to a checkpoint without first bringing your guns home? Sound crazy? People faced charges on that kind of confusion. Its become a bit better, but there are still people who face extremely harsh penalties just for having a gun in an odd circumstance. Lets not forget, these are not criminals or people even accused of anything we’d consider a crime. They are just trying to follow extremely convoluted laws.The ability of the police chief to deny a license was almost without bounds. Denying it because a person was black was frowned upon, but denying it because the person was out of work was OK. Basically you have 351 cities and towns in the state and you could potentially have 351 different criteria. Thankfully, most chiefs (and even the author of the book mentioned above strongly recommends) simply use the written laws as the criteria and don’t play politics.I could go on and on with all the issues. But the fact of the matter is that the state has nearly double the level of violent firearm crime annually today that it did back in 1998. Not only have the laws created all kinds of problems for people who have no intent in committing a crime, but the people this whole fiasco was supposed to “crack down on” are now even more active than ever. At a time where nationally the violent crime rate is dropping, Massachusetts is trending the in the opposite direction. When you read about Massachusetts having a low crime rate, what they typically fail to mention is that its been low from the beginning, not that the laws made it so.Oh, and did I mention that this law that took experts over a month to decipher was rammed through the legislature and signed in just 28 calendar days? How many of those who voted for it had any clue what they were voting for? Basically, the Democrat leadership said “Pass it” and they did.Still sound like a great thing to copy elsewhere? Well then, lets get into some other wonderful things.The Fire Marshal decrees that all ammunition must be kept in a locked container. The same Fire Marshal will write a citation when said container becomes a bomb because the pressure of the ammo igniting in a fire can’t release and blows up the container. Of course, the Fire Marshal makes no effort to explain the problem or the fact that the “locked container” should be well vented to allow ammunition to burn off safely. In other words, the state mandates something and then punishes when people do it unless those people have knowledge that transcends the norm.Come back to your vehicle after hunting. Do you lean your gun against a tree or against your truck as you remove your pack? Well, if the gun is loaded, the tree is legal, but the truck is a violation of the law.Retail stores for recreational cannabis just opened. Thing is, visiting such a store can be a violation of both federal and state gun laws.The attorney general takes it upon itself to threaten out of state companies that shipping certain products into Massachusetts is illegal when no such law exists. The AG office is simply using the unlimited resources of the state to enact a policy it can not legally enforce. Since no company can fund a legal fight, they simply comply. As a result, it is a lot harder now to order repair parts for some guns and even when you order things that are not on the AG’s list, some companies will cancel the order because “Massachusetts”.The same AG office decides to “reinterpret” certain laws that are over 30 years old. The result of which is to make hundreds of thousands of residents and former residents in violation of some very severe felonies. Even if you were to comply instantly to the new interpretation, it does not change the fact that you violated it in the past. But, rather than following through and arresting all these criminals, she makes a “Promise” to not do so. The ultimate effect? Businesses who were operating under the old rules suddenly found themselves facing severe charges. What could not be done by passing laws was done once again by threat by the AG. Anti-gun supporters LOVE this kind of illegal action. Of course, if the same treatment were to be done on something they support, there would be an outcry. Ultimately the practice will be overturned in the federal courts, but in the meantime there are millions of dollars being wasted fighting such illegal practices.Speaking of wasting millions. Lets look at the liberal wet dream in effect here. License and Registration. Massachusetts has had some form of license and firearm registration since the 1930’s. It’s changed and included more and more over the years, but it is a very long history. To manage, process, and maintain all this information (and don’t forget this is a state of less than 7 million people), the budget is roughly $6 million every year. So what do the residents of Massachusetts get for their $6m annual investment?From time to time various groups have issued Freedom of Information Act requests asking the state to provide a list of all cases where the license and registration data was used to help solve a crime. To this date, the state has not been able to show even one case where the data was useful in solving a crime. NOT ONE.Well what about preventing crimes? One of the media circus shootings was the Edgewater case. When it happened they were called “Workplace shootings”, but today would be called a “Mass shooting”. This particular one is a clear indicator of the license and registration failure. The Edgewater event occurred about 2 years after the 1998 gun laws went into effect, so there was an active push still on to slap down hard on guns. The shooter used to have a valid gun license. That license was nearly 2 years expired when the crime was committed. The state had all the information available to know that this person was potentially in felony possession of firearms without a license. In the two years between the license expiration and the crime, no effort was made to see what was going on. The state also knew all the guns used in the crime were registered to the shooter. Since all transfers (including private ones) are recorded by the state, they also knew he still had those guns. There is also evidence that the state was aware that the shooter was having mental health issues, but this is less clear due to the healthcare privacy rules. Even without any of the mental heath aspects, the state had all the information to know that the shooter had guns, had no license and was likely committing multiple felonies in regards to those guns and any ammunition he had for them. And yet, NOTHING was done. What is the use of license and registration when you can have textbook violations that are ignored?The thing is, this type of incident is extremely rare. People who have licenses are rarely arrested for violent gun related crimes. Which is why no resources are put toward dealing with what is essentially paper violations. It is simply not an effective use of police budgets. But for some reason it is justified to spend $6m annually to keep a list of all these people who almost never commit crimes and what kind of toys they own.Even the registry is suspect. In the 1990’s multiple banker boxes of registrations were destroyed due to the health threat of the mice who had made those boxes their home. How many guns in Massachusetts homes have no official registration record now? The validity of the registry is estimated by the state at about 70%. I suspect that it is far less than that.And who knows how many guns remain in homes around the state? There are houses in my town that were built in the 1600’s. Most communities still have a powder house from a time where bulk black powder was stored away from homes. A month rarely goes by when I don’t get at least one call regarding someone finding a gun in the home of an older relative. Heck, I found one when I cleaned out my grandfather’s home after his death. The thing is, none of these guns are a threat to anyone. Guns in the homes of people who are not criminals will not suddenly seduce the person to commit crimes.Up until recently, I had 2 guns in my safe that did not belong to me. A widow in town found them when going through her husband’s things. She contacted the police. Now, the police could have enforced the law and arrested the widow for felony possession of the firearms without a license, but why would anyone want to prosecute a widow in those circumstances? Instead, the chief gave me a call to not only take temporary custody of the guns (mostly so the town did not have to store them) and help the woman get licensed so that she could decide what to do with a couple of rather nice (and expensive) guns. Once her license came, I brought back her guns (all cleaned and lubed). Surely a much better solution than what the laws dictate.My point? None of the license and registration help anything. It simply wastes money on keeping track of the people most likely to NOT commit crimes. Such registries, even when in place nearly a century, are generally very inaccurate. And, regardless of the existence, guns are out there. Honest people simply find themselves in a trap. The criminals? Did you know that it is actually illegal to prosecute a criminal who failed to register a gun? Yup. Supreme Court case declared it a violation of a person’s 5th amendment rights.So, why is it that ANY state would want to follow the Massachusetts gun laws? First, they have done nothing to reduce crime. Second, they waste a ton of tax dollars that could be better spent dealing with criminals. Third, they place citizens in legal traps. Fourth, they are so convoluted that even the police have a hard time understanding them. Fifth, they allow political whims to be made de-facto law with no means to challenge other than to fight the unlimited resources of the state all the way to the federal courts.To support gun laws in Massachusetts, you must first support some of the very acts which once began a revolution in this state. Make no mistake, the American Revolution began when the Governor of Massachusetts attempted to enforce his gun control laws on the people by the seizure of private arms. Those who fail to learn from history tend to repeat it.